Mass arrests across Asia over phone scam network

PHNOM PENH: Hundreds of Chinese and Taiwanese nationals have been arrested across Asia in an international operation targeting telephone scam artists, officials in several countries said Friday. Most of the arrests were in Indonesia and Cambodia where 177 and 166 people respectively were held in a cross-border crackdown on criminals using Internet phone services to trick thousands of victims across the region out of money. In Malaysia, police on Borneo island arrested 27 Chinese and 10 Taiwanese nationals for allegedly duping people into paying fake traffic fines, the official news agency Bernama and New Straits Times daily reported. And Thai police said they had arrested four suspects, one Taiwanese woman and three Thai nationals, in raids on seven locations in Bangkok based on information provided by Taiwanese police. They said a representative of the Taiwanese police wa...